Friday, March 11, 2011

Observed

Lunching at The Standard Hotel today, I noticed that every single person at the tables around us was on their phone. This touching father/daughter scene was a wry comment on communication in the digital age (and made for a pretty good iPhone snap). FYI - I was not on my phone. I'm not a fan of texting while dining with others.

16 comments:

I noticed the same thing last weekend. 4 young women out for dinner in a very lovely restaurant.I don't think that during the time I observed them that any of them took in their surroundings or engaged with each other 100%.

I want the people I am with to be involved and present. A source of irritation whenever I am with my kids.

That is one gorgeous photo and sadly all too true. Yesterday evening while I was walking on the main square in my small Provençal town, I saw a boy, probably eight years old that was talking on his cell phone while promenading in front of his friends as a status symbol, a way of denoting himself from the others. His conversation? "Saturday? Hmmm, let me see...Saturday, saturday...no, I think that I have something." It is so outstanding how our new means of "communication" continue to evolve...

I once went to a pre-junket dinner with a group of marketing executives. There were about 12-16 of us around a wide round table. As we sat down, everyone but me took out their phones (in those days it was exclusively Blackberry) to check their emails. It was an extraordinary sight to behold. It was almost like they were reciting a pre-dinner prayer.

Like the others have said - nice photo!One could almost put each in a bubble (remember those huge glass bubbles Melvin Sokolsky had made for a fashion shoot ?).And I think that there is a great show in the making here....invite everyone to submit their 'everyone is on a phone' picture :-)

Does not the act of taking a picture with your phone contradict your statement that you were "not on [your] phone?" It seem to me that your phone use enhanced the experience you were having vs. the premise of it being a distraction from said experience.

Your post reminded me of this scene while waiting for a tram to pull away from Port Melbourne: two kids still in strollers were both tapping away and engrossed with their parent's iPhones, while the mom and dad were standing behind them, talking to each other. Would have snapped a picture if I'd had been less tired that evening. In retrospect, its like a snapshot of generational gaps. But then again, all these gadgets and their games get young children sooooo excited. I was born in the 80s, but am a technology laggard. If not for the corporate blackberry I carry, I don't think I would actually be using one.

"If only all blogs were as life-affirming and tender-hearted as that of gallerist James Danziger. Whether his focus falls on the work of an individual artist or a particular theme, The Year in Pictures is compulsive reading."